All News is Local — Something you already know about Google News is that we crawl thousands of sources from around the world. This means you get as many different perspectives on a story from many perspectives. A while back, we started thinking about how to bring this same diversity …

Look Out Topix - Google Launches Localized News Service — Topix has made a name by aggregating tens of thousands of local news sources and aggregating them online (they also like citizen journalists). It was only a matter of time before Google expanded their news product to compete more directly with Topix.

OpenID Welcomes Microsoft, Google, Verisign and IBM — As anticipated by TechCrunch UK in early January, OpenID is welcoming some big new partners to the club - Microsoft, Google, Verisign and IBM (TechCrunch UK anticipated all but Microsoft). — Google has been dabbling with OpenID …

Evolving the OpenID Foundation Board — This morning the OpenID Foundation announced that Google, IBM, Microsoft, VeriSign, and Yahoo! have joined the board. The OpenID Foundation was formed in early 2006 by seven community members with the goal of helping promote, protect and enabling the OpenID technologies and community.

Google Apps aims to move companies to the cloud — Just like rogue employees in the 1990s forced instant messaging into corporations, the new Google Apps Team Edition being launched on Thursday offers a way for workers to slip a hosted apps service into the enterprise.

Bebo For a Billion? A 100 Percent Chance of Wrongness! — First, Google and News Corp. are not about to buy Bebo for $1 billion to $1.5 billion. — Second, Bebo-as has been reported and is easy to find out about by anyone who can pick up a phone and ask around like a reporter is supposed …

Silicon Valley Arrogance — I opened an email this morning that started like this: … That's as far as I got. I replied with incredulity and moved on. — I am the first to admit that Silicon Valley has the largest concentration of web entrepreneurs, web developers, and web financiers of anywhere in the world.

IBM shrinks Cell to 45nm. Cheaper PS3s will follow — SAN FRANCISCO — At an ISSCC session yesterday afternoon, IBM announced details of a smaller, lower-power version of the Cell BE processor that powers Sony's PlayStation 3. The Cell BE is currently fabricated on IBM's 65nm SOI process …

Why Google's unstoppable — Microsoft is trying to buy Yahoo because it believes online advertising will be a much bigger business than it is today, and it wants to have a piece of the pie. Yahoo has a massive number of users, and the second-largest share of Internet searches.

Microsoft Acquisition news — Following on December's announcement that the UK's Multimap is now part of Microsoft, I'm really excited to share the news that the Virtual Earth team has grown once again. This time in the field of 3D modeling and animation.

CIA Monitors YouTube For Intelligence — U.S. spies are looking increasingly online for intelligence and they've become major consumers of social media. — In keeping with its mandate to gather intelligence, the CIA is watching YouTube. — U.S. spies, now under the Director of National Intelligence …

Future CloudBooks to Have Touch, SSD, 22-inch Screens? — Everex's first $399 ultraportable CloudBook is set to go on sale on February 15 at Walmart.com. The low-cost laptop takes direct aim at Asus' Eee PC. But will Everex's larger hard drive, better web-cam and a new improved Linux OS outshine the popular Eee PC?